


The Eternal Return of Sisyphus

by eternalwaters



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 1940s, Dead Parents, F/M, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I don’t support smoking, Slytherins Being Slytherins, fuck fate, kind of absurd, kind of sad
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-14
Updated: 2019-01-08
Packaged: 2019-10-06 15:17:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17347577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eternalwaters/pseuds/eternalwaters
Summary: “The lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same crowns his victory. There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.” --Albert Camus, “The Myth of Sisyphus”Forced to flee by the wizarding war and orphaned by the muggle, French-Algerian witch Sabrina Amari deals with the riddles of loss, identity, memory, and one named Tom.





	The Eternal Return of Sisyphus

_-September 7th, 1942-_

“Miss Amari?”

Behind my warm eyelids, everything was pale red. Lake water sloshed gently against the shore nearby and the blotchy sun caressed my face though hindered by the leaves of the tree. Smoothly, I exhaled smoke, and opened my eyes.

Before me, a tall boy stood.

“What, would you like a cigarette?” I spoke at the same time he did:

“Professor Dumbledore requires your presence in his office, Miss Amari.”

I brushed a tousled curl out of my face, and squinted at him. He stared back, not quite blinking, and seemed almost weary. He was pale. With dark hair, wavy with gel, parted on one side. A thin, pointed nose. High, sculpted cheekbones. An almost invisible crease between eyebrows and a firm set to sharp lips. There was something intense yet surreal about him, like unpolished marble stark against a rare blue sky.

He looked familiar. An odd sort of familiarity, as though I had seen him in a dream. It was then I noticed the green and silver prefect badge on his robes, and I knew who he was. Of course he would be familiar--he was in the same house and year as me.

“Thank you, Mr. Riddle.” I stood up and dusted grass stains off my black robes. Evanesco’ed the cigarette. “May I ask why Professor Dumbledore wants to see me?” I knew why.

He shook his head. “I’m afraid I do not know, Miss Amari.” As though apologetic, he flashed a soft smile—and I was taken aback. He knew why. We shared classes as housemates and I’d skipped nearly all of them today.

Tom Riddle. My dormmates fawned over this boy, always praising his looks and his wits, his charisma and his chivalry. Although we were both fifth-years in Slytherin, I had never interacted with him much for the last two years, having buried myself in the soil of old textbooks and droning classes. It was not the habit for girls to fraternize with boys anyway. I frowned at his lie and his false smile as we walked up the grassy slope to the giant castle.

“After you,” he said as he held the ancient oak door for me; “Follow me,” he said as we walked up swirling staircases that sometimes seemed to shift. My dormmates were right about his charm--yet it unsettled me instead. His presence felt like the glass eyes of a blind man: puzzling and uncanny.

We stopped before the door of the Transfiguration classroom. All was quiet; maybe an occasional footstep or two. The afternoon sun spilled through gothic windows, bleaching old flagstones to a pale beige and illuminating dust particles that floated like ghosts. There was too much dust here sometimes.

“Ah, Miss Amari.”

I jolted, looked up, and met the bright blue gaze of the Deputy Headmaster and Transfiguration Professor. When did Riddle even knock?

“Thank you for bringing her here, Mr. Riddle.” He nodded to the boy politely--yet coldly. The boy nodded back in the same manner, turned, and left.

I cleared my throat.

“Come in, please.” Dumbledore smiled pleasantly, crow’s feet heightening the twinkle in his hooded blue eyes. “Forgive the humble nature of my abode.” He gestured at his office, furnished with countless books that seemed to murmur as I walked past and obscure glassy artifacts that glinted like eyes. “Have a seat, please. Lemon drop?”

I shook my head. He took a yellow candy for himself, humming slightly.

“How was your summer, Miss Amari?”

“It was alright.” Suffocating. I had stayed at the house of my great aunt, a sleepy old muggle lady who was apparently my father’s cousin-in-law’s great aunt--and now my legal guardian. “How was yours?”

“Good, good. Wouldn’t you agree, Fawkes?”

Upon its golden perch, Dumbledore’s phoenix, now old, shriveled, ugly, pathetic, gave a great shiver and bursted into flames. I flinched. For a second, the office was lit up in an orange-gold glow, and all was hushed except the whoosh of air that the fire fed on, all was still except the flame and its swaying reflection in the half-moon glasses of the professor. My face felt the vivacity of the death of the phoenix, and I knew I must be becoming flushed from the heat.

“About time for a Burning Day. You must be familiar with the death and rebirth of a phoenix, Miss Amari?” Dumbledore looked on with a smile.

“Yes, sir.” I took a deep breath; it was time to get to the point. “If I may ask, why exactly have you called me to your office?”

He took off his glasses delicately. They continued to glint. “Frankly, Miss Amari, it is a Monday.”

I was well aware that it was a Monday, thank you very much.

“It has been brought to my attention that you have apparently been absent from all of your classes today. In fact, your Ancient Runes class just began.” Here he sighed and continued, “Miss Amari, I understand that it has only been one week since the new term started. But if this trend continues, I’m afraid you shall begin to fall behind on the studies at which you previously excelled these past two years at Hogwarts.”

As suddenly as it began, the flame dwindled into nothingness. Only a pile of pinkish grey ashes remained. I blinked at him.

”Professor, you are aware of what this day means to me?”

I thought he would be, at least. He was the one who escorted me from that dark, painfully sympathetic yet indifferent English pub to this equally sympathetic yet indifferent castle of a school in a flurry of neon green flames that tickled. Two years ago, today.

The twinkle in his eyes dimmed. “I have not forgotten, Sabrina. Yet-”

“Good.” I lowered my eyes. In silence then, I studied the armrests of my chair, tracing each elegant carving and accidental scar, how they marred the smooth wood. Eventually, I spoke, voice intentionally trembling, “I--I tried to, before. To forget. With my studies. But I’ve realized now that I cannot… I had a nightmare last night. About _that day_.”

“Sabrina,” Dumbledore said.

I looked up. His shoulder-length auburn hair was greying at the temples. I tried to stare at a nonexistent point slightly to his right.

“To remember or to forget is often not a choice, my dear.” He paused, and his gaze was elsewhere. “But we must also remember that although we are left behind, we are still among the living. To carry on may be the greatest respects we can pay them.”

A tiny, high-pitched squeal interrupted him. I looked to the ashes, and was greeted by the sight of the reborn phoenix. How laughingly symbolic.

“Miss Amari,” said Dumbledore, “I understand the reason behind your behavior today, but there will still be disciplinary action. You will be serving detention this week with your Head of House, Professor Slughorn, for the classes you missed today. Additionally, ten points will be taken from Slytherin. Please keep in mind what I have told you, if only for your own good.”

 

I walked out of his office, feeling empty and victorious. He did not understand the reason behind my behavior today, no. I did not have a nightmare about _that day_.

I did have a dream of a somewhat terrifying nature, but it was not about _that day_.

It had been dark, a permeating, opaque dark only broken through by a beacon of blue moonlight through the slanted window. I was lying in bed, in a cocoon of blankets. It was clear, even amid the hazy confusion of the dream, that this was my old room in our apartment on Rue du Temps, in the 18th arrondissement of wizarding Paris.

Then I felt, rather than heard, a strange crack in the air, as though several bones popped at once in a sort of dry, thundering way. At that very moment a figure broke through the moonlight and slumped against the floor.

There was nothing but racing hearts and scrunched shut eyes and a dreadful stillness. I burrowed myself deeper into the blankets.

Then: a thin, fluid silver light. A voice--female--repeating, “Remember, remember, remember…”

Something cool and pointy made contact with my left temple. A piercing pain stabbed through my head, and I screamed. Shrill, terrible, already forgetting.

Then I woke up, disoriented, panting, face drenched with sweat--this morning. A phantom ache in my left temple. Lost my eyes in the rich green of my canopy. For hours. Or maybe only seconds.

I thought these had stopped for good, after Papa and Maman died two years ago. I had been a fool. The recurring dreams I’d had since childhood had returned.

“Sabrina, are you alright?” Came the voice of Druella Rosier, the girl whose bed was adjacent to mine. “We’re heading to breakfast.”

“Yes,” I replied calmly, “Don’t wait for me. I’ll come up soon.”

After they left, I got up and dressed. And made my way to the tree by the lake.


End file.
